Family, Stories, work

Cleaning the Tool Bench

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My father brought all his remaining tools with him when he moved in with us the last five months of his life.   He gave lots away before he left Luverne, and took pride in how he arranged and organized his tools in his new home in North Dakota.

Since his death, we haven’t kept the tool bench as neat as Dad would want it. To be honest, it has been a disgrace for a couple of years, and Husband decided that today was the day to straighten it up.  The feature photo is a before picture. Dad didn’t care that he had duplicates of many of his tools, and we just keep them the way he displayed them.

 

As you can see from the photo, we will never need to purchase a socket set for the rest of our lives.

The coffee containers are full of drill bits, screws, nails, wall anchors, sand paper, garden staples, utility knives, nuts, bolts, washers, holders to use on the peg board, and just about anything anyone could need at a tool bench.

I am glad Husband took the initiative to get this done. I hope we can keep it this way for a while.

It is the weekend. What would your parents want you to accomplish before Monday?

 

 

79 thoughts on “Cleaning the Tool Bench”

  2. My parents wouldn’t have cared a whit if I accomplished anything on a weekend. They wanted me to be happy, not accomplished, for that is how they lived. For better or worse, they shaped me to live in the now.

    Living in the now has not been especially pleasant lately. My move to Michigan has been “interesting” (as in the Chinese curse of “may you live in interesting times”). But my stuff has arrived, even if much of it is still in boxes. Yesterday I was reunited with a dear friend when my old (2002) Outback showed up. In a few days I will be joined by my daughter and grandson, and all of us will make a project of living in a new sort of now.

    Better: last night I got a letter from the dear friend I write daily. She fell in April, shattering a hip. People in their mid-90s pay a price for falling. I heard on May 6 that she had survived surgery. Since then I have gone over 6 weeks not knowing if she was doing well or even if she was still alive. She is back in her home this morning, soldiering on, and so we go on . . . .

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    1. Good news about your friends, both vehicular and epistolary and glad to know you arrived intact. I look forward to dispatches from Port Huron.

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      1. I have always known of epistolary novels. Epistolary friends are a new moniker which I like. In many ways the Trail Baboon is a new age epistolary friendship that seeps out into real time–kind of a novel and letter nomination. What a fun thought.

        What can we do with that?

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        1. I can’t answer your question, but I can make a recommendation. The best epistolary novel I’ve read recently is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society: a Novel. The author is Annie Barrows. I recommended the novel to MiG years ago, and she fell in love with it. I’m sure the charm of that book will appeal to many Baboons.

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        4. I love that book, Steve. I like epistolary novels quite a bit (usually).

          If I remember correctly, Annie Barrows’ aunt, Mary Ann Shaffer, started writing the book and health issues prevented her from completing it. Annie Barrows, author of the Ivy and Bean series then stepped in to finish it.

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      1. Mostly good. A little strange. Since it was my first experience of First Class I thought I might be chatting with Ivanka or other glitterati, but my mates in the front of the plane were almost as dowdy as I was. I couldn’t get my seat to recline and was too proud to ask for help. The airplane roared so loudly I could hear nothing. I watched a nice movie without hearing a word of dialogue. Since it was about the inner life of a dog I could guess what was being said.

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    4. So very glad to hear of your friend’s survival and doing well enough to be back home.

      OT: Steve, is your email address the same as before your move? If not, send me an email so I have the new address. If it’s the same, you need do nothing.

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  3. Rise and Weekend, Baboons.

    Dad wanted us to sit and talk with him and play some hands of cribbage. If we were lucky, our neighbor, Harry, would feel the cribbage vibes and appear to play with us. My mother would want the house cleaned. She was known to fire up the vacuum cleaner at 9am on a Saturday morning, then run it outside the door of any sleeping teen-ager in the house. This, of course, was supremely irritating to said sleeping teen-agers.

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    1. OT, this week I met an important goal. Two years ago I started a certification process for the kind of therapy I practice. Shortly after starting this process my father-in-law died, and my mother needed to move into a Memory Care unit throwing both sides of our family into tizzies. After passing the initial exam, I had to postpone the rest of it. I reinstated my account this winter while in Arizona,then submitted the next step of it (a many-paged case formulation). Next I submitted 3 hours of recordings of me actually doing the therapy. That took 2 days just to download into the system. I was notified Saturday that I passed. This thing seemed equivalent to an entire graduate program. Wa-Hoo!

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        1. Now I get to sign my name with the new credential and I am considered an “expert” in this (right now only 138 people in the world have the credential). I can teach or consult with any program in the world trying to set up a DBT program. There is one person credentialed in Italy, a favorite place of mine. I am going to email her and suggest we partner in a training there. LOL. Really I will send the email. Why not?

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        1. But I never retired. I just sold the business so I can end my career just doing the therapy and not running the business.

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  4. I haven’t really given a thought to what my parents would want me to do for about 50 years and so I’m out of the habit.
    My Dad never had a workshop as such. He was a sheet metal worker by trade and his tools tended more towards metallic and mechanical than towards woodworking. He kept them in the toolboxes he had made as part of his training at Dunwoody.
    I’ve had a workshop of some sort in every house we’ve had, with tools that correspond to the kinds of projects I’ve undertaken. My workshop in the present house is small and I’ve adopted my Dad’s practice of using toolboxes. I have separate toolboxes for plumbing, electrical work and outdoor projects that allow me to take the appropriate tools to the job at hand without having to assemble a toolkit every time.

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    1. great idea
      i had a brown cardboard box on a 2×4 shelf down the basement of home of 20 years then i moved and everything went into storage
      painting rollers and trays and brushes in one plumbing specialty ,
      tile work
      stucco and drywall
      then my woodworking and wrench/socket everyday items
      i tend to look a minute ten go buy it again
      my disorganization resulted in 8 hammers. 4 wonder bars, 20 phillips headcscrewdrivers plastic boxes full of sockets ratchets snips and pliers, i love the farm multi tools with hammer wire cutter pliers and fencing crimper.
      i have 6 or 7 monster buckets full of tool stuff out in my warehouse
      i hope to bring table saws, radial arm saws drill press and woodworking tools to current location
      i love having tools to work with
      i love the deal your dad had in laverne where he put the pegboard all in order big wrenches to little screwdrivers long to short
      plrirs and wire cutters arranged in the holders with their handles down and business end up and then you spray paint everything so the outline is left on the pegboard and you can tell where everything goes back and what if anything is missing
      someday….

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  5. Well, this apple didn’t fall far from the Nonny Tree so I’m pretty sure I’m doing what she would do and that would probably make her happy. Making a list and get going! And I finished a book this morning before I got online which would make my dad happy!

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  6. My mother would want me to dust, vacuum, and get everything tidy and put away. That is my goal, too, but the weeds in tbe garden call to be removed. My dad would appreciate the cleaned up work bench, but then tell me I work too hard.

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  7. Interesting question, Renee – I think considering I got good grades and didn’t trash my room, they would have pretty much let me set my own weekend schedule – unless there was some big family project like “clean the basement” which I would have been required to help with. In high school I would have probably been enlisted to drive my younger sister somewhere… And I would have been expected to go to church on Sunday.
    Huh! I would like to go back in time and see what I was doing on the weekend.

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  8. Gosh, I have no idea what my parents would like me to accomplish before Monday. Probably not housework since that was never high on their to-do lists. Maybe they would want me to go do something FUN? (Fun? What is that?) I will try to finish one of the books for book club and go to book club (and make some yummy food to bring to book club). Also make some progress on a certain project I’ve just barely started.

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  9. Well, I could ask ’em…
    Growing up, we always had a big home improvement project over the summer that we all worked on every weekend. They would want me doing something like that. But I hate yard work, housework, and home improvement.

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    1. I feel the same way. Housework – bleh. Home improvement – double bleh (I’ve had a long and horrible history with home improvement projects). I tolerate some yard work and had the illusion that I liked gardening for a long time. And there is something satisfying about a little bid of digging in the dirt…but last year after I got so sick, I realized Hey, I really don’t care about gardening that much. Of course I enjoy looking at the flowers and eating things like raspberries but no way do I want to spend hours of my week trying to control weeds that have much more determination than I do.

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      1. You’re speaking to me here. For the first time in a decade, I decided to put a LOT of money and a LOT of hard labor into weed-pulling, mulching (40 bags), planting perennials and annuals, and re-filling a landscape bed with top soil. It was beautiful…… until the deer ate all blossoms from the flowering plants and half of my huge hosta bed and Creeping Charlie went on a rampage, taking over the grass. Adding insult to injury, a significant rainstorm clogged the gutter, sending cascades of water down over all my new plants in the window boxes. This not only drowned them, it swept them to the ground.

        Not to be entirely defeated, I bought all new flowers. Big pots. Little pots. I also bought deer repellent made from coyote urine to spray over every hosta and every flower. That night, I could barely handle this stench wafting through my open windows. Mother nature seems to be mounting a huge challenge for sure!

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        1. bach mans sells a 3 month deer repellent from sweedenvthat works good and doesn’t wash off in the rain
          try it or egg shells with tobacco sauce and water sprinkled on regularly

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        3. tobasco or any hot sauce.
          aldi sells a monster bottle for a buck. try that.
          be sure to dilute it and the try in one spot to be sure it doesnt burn the leaves of the plant. i use it as the kick part of the concoction with eggs milk garlic and kind of a stink bomb that works well. it need to be reapplied after a rain. the tobasco is the thing that teaches the slow ones the yard next door is a better spot to munch. not so much a spicy addition as a deturrant if they get past the milk egg garlic mixture

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    2. my buddy suggested rebuilding a wooden boat a couple years ago. i still think of it and wish i’d done it
      maybe one of these days…

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      1. They say boats are holes into which you can throw money you’ll never see again. A wood boat is a hole into which you can throw time you’ll never get back. But that might not be bad. I read a good book written by (of all people) Joe Soucheray. He described rehabbing a classic wood Chris Craft with his dad in the years just before his dad died.

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    1. I’ve had a blog post I’ve been sitting on for a few months. I’m stuck on what the question should be. If I can figure that out, I’ll get it posted.

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        2. No, I just decided a not very good question was better than nothing. You all have my permission to ignore the question and talk about whatever you want when it’s published.

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    2. I have one I have been meaning to write but work has been eating my brain…will try to get it off to you or VS before the week is out.

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    2. Sent. But I wish I had waited until after the rain to take the pictures so I could have shot some raindrops on the plants.

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        1. Too late, i was busy making pizza for the fam and the wind was blowing so briskly that i knew the raindrops would be blown off in a matter of minutes. I’ll try another day.

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        2. ljb, one of the simplest tricks in photography is spritzing plants with mist from a water dispenser to get those appealing photos of beads of rain on a plant.

          Because I made my living taking photos for fishing stories, I long ago learned how to fake things to get better pictures. I could tell you stories.

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        3. At my former employer, who was also Steve’s erstwife’s former employer, one of the company’s main products was a series of books on hunting and fishing. They were photo heavy and for many of the underwater shots the photo studio had a large glass-sided tank. Various employees of that book series would be tasked with going out and catching whatever type of fish was required for the title in production.

          Some of the devices and extremes that the photo studio had to resort to in order to get convincing action photos were a sight to behold. I remember on particular cover photo, where the fish was supposed to be bursting the surface of the “lake”, lure in its mouth. The fish in question was only the front half of a fish with a stick thrust into its back half and a studio technician was animating it like a puppet for the camera.

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        4. Yeah, I know about that, Steve, but something in me thinks of that as cheating. But, yes, you should tell me stories. Perhaps that would help me get over the feeling of “cheating.” Did you have any tricks to help with windy days – for example, when you need a slow shutter speed but the plant or flower is bobbing around in the wind?

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        5. Answering your question about the windy day problem, I had an idea I never put to the test. My notion was to fashion some braces using coat hanger wire, braces that could be jammed into the earth to steady the waving flower. You’d have to keep the brace just outside (below) the frame so it would show.

          Or you could create a wind deflecting shield that could be erected between the flower and the wind (wire jammed into the ground could hold a shield of cardboard or cloth). Think of a political lawn sign, only make it much smaller.

          As a desperate measure, you could try to stop the motion of the flower using a flash in the “fill flash” mode.

          A delightful rascal I worked with had a nice expression for all those tricks we used to get exciting photos: “If you don’t fake it, it don’t look real.” I’ll bet Bill knows some tricks from his days working around food photography.

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        6. (Reply to Bill’s post about “cheating” photo tactics at Cy de Cosse).

          There was a story about that. One day Cy was visited by a young woman, a newlywed who was the heiress to the Woolworth family fortune. Cy took her and her new husband on a tour of the business. They walked into the area where there was that fish tank just as one of the guys killed a smallmouth bass to jam it on a stick so they could photograph it. The bass went into a death spasm. The sight of that caused the Woolworth princess to faint so quickly that nobody could catch her before she hit the floor.

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        8. There is a trend among some photographers to show all that stuff that you would normally keep outside the frame. For example, if you have a person sitting on a stool in a studio for a portrait, instead of shooting just a head shot, you would pull back and shoot not just a whole body shot showing the stool, but also the backdrop frame, the lights on their stands, etc. It’s not my style, but it is interesting.

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  12. I think my parents would be extremely pleased to see all of the renovations, decorating, and landscaping I’ve done with the old cottage. Since everything except for creating a downstairs bedroom was completed 17 years ago, my kids and grand kids have urged me to “change things up”. I now understand why my parents kept it pretty much the same for decades other than reupholstering and carpeting a few times. It’s hard to create a new canvas when the first one created was perfection.

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    1. They’d love seeing how you have cared for the place without changing what makes it so unique. You should host a book club meeting so the rest of the gang can experience that wonderful place. Let other baboons bring food. Buy a box of wine. It would be a fun afternoon!

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  15. O.T.: Could someone send me Jaque and Lou’s address? It’s been a couple of years since I was last at their house.
    Thanks.

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      1. I will likely miss BBC again today (see above comment: work has been eating my brain…big “not my day job but for work” project comes to fruition Tuesday and have been bird dogging a thorny issue that is part of my day job…and it means I am doing work this weekend). Boo. Miss you all.

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  16. Dang it, WP ate my post.

    Blah blah blah
    I always feel like I have to be productive and get SOMETHING done on the weekend. What doesn’t matter as much as just accomplishing something.

    I’ll be out of the loop next week. Working the AACT festival in town and I’m in charge of the lightboard. Tech meetings at 7AM and rehearsals until 10:30 PM.
    Theater should never be done in the mornings.
    And 7AM tech meetings suck.
    Pardon my French.

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  17. A few days ago, Clyde said, abruptly, “Goodbye.” And we haven’t heard from him since. I wondered then what it meant. Anyone know what’s up?

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  18. I don’t know that my parents ever had specific agendas for the weekend, nor did/do they expect it of their children. Keep the house from falling down and relatively tidy – that was enough for them. I may fail some on the latter, but not enough to worry the neighbors. One thing I did yesterday, that I think my parents would be happy about: spent a couple hours trying to make the world a little better, a little friendlier, a little more welcoming (was working a booth at Mpls Pride). Both would I have no doubts agree that supporting people who have been marginalized, brutalized, and cut off simply for being who they are is a much better way to spend the day than cleaning the windows or painting the garage.

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  19. Well, yesterday we weeded, and today we went to church and then came home and vacuumed and dusted. I’d say that makes me eligible for a nap.

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  20. When I was about five or six, I’d tell my mother I was bored and had nothing to do, and she’d suggest I could pick up all the toys and books in the playroom in the basement and put everything away. I learned pretty quickly to just find my own entertainment and not ask for something to do. But my mother never nagged me about stuff like that, unless I asked. So I’m not going to ask.

    That being said, I did take a couple of minutes today to scrub a watering can I have that used to be hers. It’s a yellow plastic one from the fifties or so. It gets a little grungy from time to time. She would never have tolerated that when it was hers.

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